Kerala +2 Philosophy flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Philosophy

The rational inquiry into fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, value, reason, and mind, pursued through argument and conceptual analysis rather than empirical experiment alone.

Socratic method

A dialogical method of inquiry in which persistent questioning exposes contradictions in an interlocutor's beliefs, prompting revision and progress toward definitions of virtue and knowledge.

Validity

A property of arguments in which the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises: it is impossible for all premises to be true while the conclusion is false.

Modus tollens

A valid argument form: if P then Q; not Q; therefore not P. It denies the consequent and thereby validly denies the antecedent.

Falsifiability

Popper's criterion that a scientific hypothesis must make predictions that could, in principle, be shown false by observation; unfalsifiable claims are not scientific.

Gettier problem

Counterexamples showing that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge when the justification is accidentally related to the truth of the belief.

Foundationalism

The epistemological view that knowledge rests on basic beliefs that are justified without inference, and that all other justified beliefs derive support from these foundations.

A priori knowledge

Knowledge that is justified independently of sensory experience, such as mathematical and logical truths, in contrast to a posteriori knowledge derived from experience.

Hume's problem of induction

The argument that past regularities cannot logically guarantee future ones, so inductive inferences lack rational justification unless a principle of uniformity is assumed.

Aristotle's four causes

Material (what something is made of), formal (its essence or structure), efficient (the source of its change), and final (its purpose or end).

Ontology

The branch of metaphysics that studies being, existence, and the fundamental categories of what there is, including substances, properties, and relations.

Compatibilism

The position that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with causal determinism, typically by analyzing freedom as acting on one's own desires without external constraint.

Substance dualism

Descartes' view that mind and body are two distinct kinds of substance, mental and physical, raising the interaction problem of how they causally affect each other.

Functionalism

The philosophy of mind view that mental states are defined by their causal roles and functional relations to inputs, outputs, and other states, not by their physical composition.

Hard problem of consciousness

Chalmers' term for the difficulty of explaining why physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience, or qualia, rather than occurring without any felt quality.

Hume's bundle theory

The view that the self is not a persisting substance but only a bundle of perceptions in constant flux, with personal identity arising from imagination and memory.

Categorical imperative

Kant's supreme moral principle: act only on maxims that you could will to become universal laws, and treat humanity as an end, never merely as a means.

Utilitarianism

A consequentialist moral theory holding that the right action maximizes overall happiness or well-being, associated with Bentham and Mill.

Virtue ethics

An approach centering on character and flourishing (eudaimonia), holding that right action is what a virtuous person would do, with virtues as stable dispositions between extremes.

Veil of ignorance

Rawls' device for choosing principles of justice without knowing one's place in society, ensuring impartiality and yielding his two principles of justice.

Harm principle

Mill's principle that the only legitimate reason to restrict a person's liberty is to prevent harm to others, not to enforce moral or paternalistic preferences.

Social contract

The theory that political authority derives from an agreement among people to form a state, as developed differently by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

Āstika and nāstika

The Indian classification of philosophical schools as orthodox (āstika), accepting Vedic authority, or heterodox (nāstika), rejecting it, such as Cārvāka, Jainism, and Buddhism.

Advaita Vedānta

Śaṅkara's non-dualist school holding that brahman alone is ultimately real, the world is māyā, and the individual self is not different from brahman.

Anātman

The Buddhist doctrine of no-self, denying a permanent, unchanging self and analyzing the person as a bundle of impermanent aggregates (skandhas).

Pramāṇa

In Indian epistemology, a valid means or source of knowledge; Nyāya recognizes perception, inference, comparison, and testimony as pramāṇas.

Anekāntavāda

The Jain doctrine of many-sidedness, holding that reality is complex and every object admits multiple partial perspectives, expressed through syādvāda's seven-fold predication.

Ontological argument

An a priori argument (Anselm, Descartes) that God's existence follows from the very concept of a greatest conceivable being, which must possess existence.

Problem of evil

The challenge that the existence of evil is inconsistent with an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, met by free will and soul-making defenses.

Just war theory

A framework (Augustine, Aquinas) specifying conditions for morally permissible war (jus ad bellum) and conduct within war (jus in bello), including proportionality and discrimination.

Fideism

The view that religious faith rests on commitment and revelation rather than reason or evidence, associated with Tertullian and Kierkegaard.

Dialectic

A method of inquiry through opposition and resolution of contradictions, used by Socrates and Plato for truth-seeking and by Hegel for historical development.